Part VIII: Unity to God

A knower is able “to take things in”. There are no doubt a thousand divergent precisions we can make in this statement, I only speak of knowledge as a power to take things in because it allows for a general agreement from which to start.

Knowledge is distinguished, however, from another kind of “taking things in” that is common to all living things, sc. nourishment. The difference between the two is clear enough: eating destroys what it takes in, but knowledge does not. But eating destroys because it takes another thing into itself materially; and therefore all knowledge takes another into itself immaterially.

Both knowledge and eating imply an other, but not in the same way. Eating is not perfect so long as the other still exists (this would mean it was yet to be digested), but the very perfection of knowledge is the possession of the other as such. This other means the same thing as object. Knowledge, therefore, contains objectivity in its very account, and so to wonder “whether knowledge is objective” is the same as to wonder whether knowledge exists at all. But to wonder whether knowledge exists is a childish concern that cannot survive the most basic liar- paradox refutation.

Since the perfection of knowledge is the object as object, to know means to be an other as other. This being other happens because the knower exists in an immaterial way, and is able to take things in immaterially. The knower, then, will find its greatest happiness in the immaterial world, in the friendship with the most perfect immaterial other. And this being all call God.__________________________*Knowledge is divided into two kinds, sensation and intellectual knowledge. Much of what we say here is true of both kinds, although it is only unqualifiedly so with intellectual knowledge.